How very improperly “it” behaved the morning they were to leave! During
the two days after the ball “it” had been rather something inspiring,
something exciting; but now when Downie is to leave, when “it” realizes
that the end has come, that “it” will never play any part in her life,
then it changes to a death thrust, to a deathly coldness.
She feels as if she were dragging a body of stone down the stairs to
the breakfast-room. She stretches out a heavy, cold hand of stone when
she says good-morning; she speaks with a slow tongue of stone; smiles
with hard stone lips. It is a labor, a labor.
But who can help being glad when everything is arranged according to
old-fashioned faith and honor.
Uncle Theodore turns to Downie at breakfast and explains with a
strangely harsh voice that he has decided to give Maurits the position
of manager at Laxohyttan; but as the aforesaid young man, continued
Uncle, with a strained attempt to return to his usual manner, is not
much at home in practical occupations, he may not enter upon the
position until he has a wife at his side. Has she, Miss Downie, tended
her myrtle so well that she can have a crown and wreath in September?
She feels how he is looking into her face. She knows that he wishes to
have a glance as thanks, but she does not look up.
Maurits leaps up. He embraces Uncle and makes a great deal of noise.
“But, Anne-Marie, why do you not thank Uncle? You must kiss Uncle
Theodore, Anne-Marie. Laxohyttan is the most beautiful place in the
world. Come now, Anne-Marie!”
She raises her eyes. There are tears in them, and through the tears a
glance full of despair and reproach falls on Maurits. She cannot
understand; he insists upon going with an uncovered light into the
powder magazine. Then she turns to Uncle Theodore; but not with the
shy, childish manner she had before, but with a certain nobleness, with
something of the martyr, of an imprisoned queen.
“You are much too good to us,” she says only.
Thus is everything accomplished according to the demands of honor.
There is not another word to be said in the matter. He has not robbed
her of her faith in him whom she loves. She has not betrayed herself.
She is faithful to him who has made her his betrothed, although she is
only a poor girl from a little bakery in a back street.
And now the chaise can be brought up, the trunks be corded, the
luncheon-basket filled.
Uncle Theodore leaves the table. He goes and places himself by a
window. Ever since she has turned to him with that tearful glance he is
out of his senses. He is quite mad, ready to throw himself upon her,
press her to his breast and call to Maurits to come and tear her away
if he can.
His hands are in his pockets. Through the clenched fists cramp-like
convulsions are passing.
Can he allow her to put on her hat, to say goodbye to the old lady?
There he stands again on the cliff of Naxos and wishes to steal the
beloved for himself. Nor, not steal! Why not honorably and manfully
step forward and say: “I am your rival, Maurits. Your betrothed must
choose between us. You are not married; there is no sin in trying to
win her from you. Look well after her. I mean to use every expedient.”
Then he would be warned, and she would know what alternative lay before
her.
His knuckles cracked when he clenched his fists again. How Maurits
would laugh at his old uncle when he stepped forward and explained
that! And what would be the good of it? Would he frighten her, so that
he would not even be allowed to help them in the future?
But how will it go now when she approaches to say good-bye to him? He
almost screams to her to take care, to keep three paces away from him.
He remains at the window and turns his back on them all, while they are
busy with their wraps and their luncheon-basket. Will they never be
ready to go? He has already lived it through a thousand times. He has
taken her hand, kissed her, helped her into the chaise. He has done it
so many times that he believes she is already gone.
He has also wished her happiness. Happiness—Can she be happy with
Maurits? She has not looked happy this morning. Oh yes, certainly she
has. She wept with joy.
While he is standing there Maurits suddenly says to Anne-Marie: “What a
dunce I am! I am quite forgetting to speak to Uncle about father’s
shares.”
“I think it would be best if you did not,” Downie answers. “Perhaps it
is not right.”
“Nonsense, Anne-Marie. The shares do not pay anything just now. But who
knows if they will not be better some day? And besides, what does it
matter to Uncle? Such a little thing—”
She interrupts with unusual eagerness, almost anxiously. “I beg of you,
Maurits, do not do it. Give in to me this once.”
He looks at her, a little offended. “This once!—as if I were a tyrant
over you. No, do you see, I cannot; just for that word I think that I
ought not to yield.”
“Do not cling to a word, Maurits. This means more than polite phrases.
I think it is not well of you to wish to cheat Uncle now when he has
been so good to us.”
“Be quiet, Anne-Marie, be quiet! What do you understand of business?”
His whole manner is now irritatingly calm and superior. He looks at her
as a schoolmaster looks at a good pupil who is making a fool of himself
at his examination.
“That you do not at all understand what is at stake!” she cries. And
she strikes out despairingly with her hands.
“I really must talk to Uncle now,” says Maurits, “if for nothing else,
to show him that there is no question of any deceit. You behave so that
Uncle can believe that I and my father are veritable cheats.”
And he comes forward to his uncle and explains to him what these shares
which his father wishes to sell him are. Uncle Theodore listens to him
as well as he can. He understands instantly that his brother has made a
bad speculation and wishes to protect himself from loss. But what of
it, what of it? He is accustomed to render to the whole family
connection such services. But he is not thinking of that, but of
Downie. He wonders what is the meaning of that look of resentment she
casts upon Maurits. It was not exactly love.
And so in the midst of his despair over the sacrifice he has to make, a
faint glimmer of hope begins to rise up before him. He stands and
stares at it like a man who is sleeping in a haunted room and sees a
light mist rise from the floor and condense and grow and become a
tangible reality.
“Come with me into my room, Maurits,” he says; “you shall have the
money immediately.”
But while he speaks his eyes rest on Downie to see if the ghost can be
prevailed upon to speak. But as yet he sees only dumb despair in her.
But he has hardly sat down by the desk in his room when the door opens
and Anne-Marie comes in.
“Uncle Theodore,” she says, very firmly and decidedly, “do not buy
those papers!”
Ah, such courage, Downie! Who would have believed it of you who had
seen you three days ago, when you sat at Maurits’s side in the chaise
and seemed to shrink and grow smaller for every word he said.
Now she needs all her courage, for Maurits is angry in earnest.
“Hold your tongue!” he hisses at her, and then roars to make himself
heard by Uncle Theodore, who is sitting at his desk and counting notes.
“What is the matter with you? The shares give no interest now; I have
told Uncle that; but Uncle knows as well as I that they will pay. Do
you think Uncle will let himself be cheated by one like me? Uncle
surely understands those things better than any of us. Has it ever been
my intention to give out these shares as good? Have I said anything but
that for him who can wait it may be a good affair?”
Uncle Theodore says nothing; he only hands a package of notes to
Maurits. He wonders if this will make the ghost speak.
“Uncle,” says the little intractable proclaimer of the truth, for it is
a known fact that no one can be more intractable than those soft,
delicate creature when they are in the right, “these shares are not
worth a shilling and will never be. We all know it at home there.”
“Anne-Marie, you make me out a scoundrel!”
She surveys him all over as if her eyes were the moving blades of a
pair of scissors, and she cuts off him bit by bit everything in which
she had clothed him; and when at last she sees him in all the nakedness
of egotism and selfishness, her terrible little tongue passes sentence
upon him:—
“What else are you?”
“Anne-Marie!”
“Yes, what else are we both,” continues the merciless tongue, which,
since it has once started, finds it best to clear up this matter which
has tortured her conscience ever since she has begun to realize that
this rich man who owned this big estate had a heart too which could
suffer and yearn. So while her tongue is so well started and all
shyness seems to have fallen from her, she says:—
“When we placed ourselves in the chaise at home there, what did we
think? What did we talk about on the way? About how we would deceive
him there. ‘You must be brave, Anne-Marie,’ you said. ‘And you must be
crafty, Maurits,’ I said. We thought only of ingratiating ourselves. We
wished to have much and we wished to give nothing except hypocrisy. It
was not our intention to say: ‘Help us, because we are poor and care
for one another,’ but we were to flatter and fawn until Uncle was
charmed by me or by you; that was our intention. But we meant to give
nothing in return; neither love nor respect nor even gratitude. And why
did you not come alone, why must I come too? You wished to show me to
him; you wished me to—to—”
Uncle Theodore rises when he sees Maurits raise his hand against her.
For now he has finished counting, and follows what is passing with his
heart swelling with hope. His heart flies wide open to receive her as
she now screams and runs into his arms, runs there without hesitation
or consideration, quite as if there were no other place on earth to
which to run.
“Uncle, he will strike me!”
And she presses close, close to him.
But Maurits is now calm again. “Forgive my impetuosity, Anne-Marie,” he
says. “It hurt me to hear you speak in such a childish way in Uncle’s
presence. But Uncle must also understand that you are only a child.
Still I grant that not even the most just wrath gives a man the right
to strike a woman. Come here now and kiss me. You need not seek
protection from me with anybody.”
She does not move, does not turn, only clings more closely.
“Downie, shall I let him take you?” whispers Uncle Theodore.
She answers only with a shudder, which quivers through him also.
Uncle Theodore feels so strong, so inspired. He, too, no longer sees
his perfect nephew as before in the bright light of his perfection. He
dares to jest with him.
“Maurits,” he says, “you surprise me. Love makes you weak. Can you so
promptly forgive her having called you a scoundrel? You must break with
her instantly. Your honor, Maurits, think of your honor! Nothing in the
world can permit a woman to insult a man. Place yourself in the chaise,
my boy, and go away without this abandoned creature! It is only pure
and simple justice after such an insult.”
As he finishes this speech, he puts his big hands about her head and
bends it back so that he can kiss her forehead.
“Give up this abandoned creature!” he repeats.
But now Maurits begins to understand also. He sees the light in Uncle
Theodore’s eyes and how one smile after the other dances over his lips.
“Come, Anne-Marie!”
She starts. Now he calls her as the man to whom she has promised
herself. She feels she must obey. And she lets go of Uncle Theodore so
suddenly that he cannot stop her, but she cannot go to Maurits; so she
slides down to the floor and there she remains sitting and sobs.
“Go home alone in your chaise, Maurits,” says Uncle Theodore sharply.
“This young lady is guest in my house as yet, and I intend to protect
her from your interference.”
He no longer thinks of Maurits, but only to lift her up, dry her tears
and whisper that he loves her.
Maurits, who sees them, the one weeping, the other comforting, cries:
“Oh, this is a conspiracy! I am tricked! This is a comedy! You have
stolen my betrothed from me and you mock me! You let me call one who
never intends to come! I congratulate you on this affair, Anne-Marie!”
As he rushes out and slams the door, he calls back: “Fortune-hunter!”
Uncle Theodore makes a movement as if to go after him and chastise him,
but Downie holds him back.
“Ah, Uncle Theodore, do let Maurits have the last word. Maurits is
always right. Fortune-hunter,—that is just what I am, Uncle Theodore.”
She creeps again close to him without hesitation, without question. And
Uncle Theodore is quite confused; just now she was weeping and now she
is laughing; just now she was going to marry one man and now she is
caressing another. Then she lifts up her head and smiles: “Now I am
your little dog. You cannot be rid of me.”
“Downie,” says Uncle Theodore with his gruffest voice: “You have known
it the whole time!”
She began to whisper: “Had my brother—”
“And yet you wished, Downie—Maurits is lucky to be rid of you. Such a
foolish, deceitful, hypocritical Downie, such an unreliable little
wisp, such a, such a—”
Ah, Downie, ah, silken flower! You were certainly not a fortune-hunter
only; you were also a fortune-giver, otherwise there would be nothing
left of your happy peace in the house where you lived. To this day the
garden is shaded by big beeches and the birch tree trunks stand there
white and spotless from the root upwards. To this day the snake suns
himself in peace on the slope, and in the pond in the park swims a carp
which is so old that no boy has the heart to catch it. And when I come
there, I feel that there is festival in the air, and it seems as if the
birds and flowers still sang their beautiful songs of you.